


Hold the Light

by inlovewithnight



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, The Force, making connections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:07:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22149916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: Rey has more steps to take, and more work to do.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	Hold the Light

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this, checked Wookieepedia to verify some spelling, and realized I had forgotten about the part in Rogue One where the Empire blasts Jedha City out of existence. So it's AU for that bit, and clearly I'm due for a re-watch.

Jedha doesn’t have any kind of traffic control anymore. Rey brings the Falcon down in the desert outside Jedha City, watching through the Force to be sure she isn’t landing on top of a nomad’s herds, or an isolated hut, or just a person walking from one place to another. A pilot without Force awareness would have just had to close their eyes and hope for the best. This is life in the galaxy after the fall of the First Order and the Empire before it, with the Senate so long gone. Everyone was just closing their eyes and hoping.

She leaves the ship in BB-8’s care and walks toward the city, tugging a loose scarf around her head to filter the dust on the endless desert wind. This part of Jedha’s desert is more hard-baked and wind-swept than Jakku’s sands, but some things were consistent. The sharp blue of the sky, for one thing. The sharp edge of the wind. The way that making a point on the horizon and making it your focus was the only way to get where you were going instead of drifting off into the haze.

Jedha City’s walls are crumbling everywhere, from age in some places and from Imperial and First Order assaults in others. The broken-off, jagged pieces of stone in the latter places are already being smoothed down by dust driven on the wind. Here and there, the skeletons of abandoned Imperial equipment stand rusting away; everything useful would have been stripped from them long ago, but the frames are too big to disassemble until they fall apart on their own.

Rey finds herself humming as she walks, old scavenger songs from Jakku. It isn’t a life she wants to live again, but it _was_ her life; it made her who she is now. She won’t forget it or apologize for it, and she won’t deny what she gained from it, either.

She thinks, somewhere in the back of her mind, she can feel Luke’s approval of that. _Never forget who you are_ , his voice low and rough like in their evening talks on Ahch-To—she can almost hear it.

She brushes her knuckles across her eyes—can’t spare tears in the desert—then tightens her scarf and keeps walking. She’s close enough now that she can see the wreckage of the Temple, on the far side of the city from where she landed. 

The Jedi books she took from Ahch-To were brief on the subject of the Temple of the Kyber and the Guardians of the Whills, but there was enough for her to piece together that they had known another way of interacting with the Force. Not Jedi themselves, but something like their cousins. And they were gone, too. Palpatine had seen to it.

She has to stop, dropping down onto her toes, ducking her head between her knees. _Palpatine, Palpatine, Palpatine._ If she lets the name echo in her mind it gets louder and louder, threatening to open up the ground under her feet and swallow her into endless darkness. 

“He’s gone,” she says aloud, needing to hear it as well as think it, to feel the vibrations of her own voice in her throat and chest and jawbone. “He’s _gone_. I’m still here.”

She is still here, and all of the Jedi are with her, a vast cloud at the edge of her awareness, bound up in the Force. They sent the dreams that led her here to Jedha, she knows. Dreams of the city, and the Temple. Dreams of something she’ll find there, something that comes willingly to her hand. 

She reaches the edges of the city, where a woman is grilling something over a fire in a cut-off shipping container. “Hello,” Rey says, keeping herself a good way back to show that she isn’t a threat. 

The woman looks up, eyes narrowing under her own scarf. “You’re not from here.”

“No, I’m traveling. Just passing through.”

“We don’t get many of those.” The woman turns her head toward the shadow of the wrecked craft frames, seemingly on instinct, and Rey understands. On Jakku they all learned to orient around the wreckage of the Star Destroyers, too. “Not since the Imperial days.”

“The First Order never came here?”

“Why would they?” She turns back to her grilling with a snort. “They took everything worth taking on this moon. No point in anyone else coming back to pick the corpse.”

Rey nods, gripping her hands tightly in front of her. “I’m trying to get to the old Temple. Is there a best way to get there?”

The woman stops again, looking at Rey with open astonishment. “The Temple? There is no Temple. What do you want with that wreck?”

Rey shrugs, trying to summon a smile from the depths of her exhaustion. She doesn’t know what she wants with it. She just knows she has to go, or the dreams won’t leave her alone. She’ll never be unhaunted, but at least the ghosts are quiet when she’s doing what they want. 

“I just need to go there,” she says. “Can I cut right through the city or is there an easier way?”

The woman shakes her head. “Cutting through the city will take you a week, a stranger trying to find the way through. You’ll want to go around the walls and come in from the north side. Not where’s crumbled down, but the actual old gate. You’ll know it when you see it. Just keep walking straight on the street you come in on and it’ll take you to the temple.”

“Thank you,” Rey says honestly. “I appreciate your help.”

“There’s nothing there, though! Nothing but old rocks and ghosts.”

“I understand.” The ghosts are probably what she’s looking for, along with whatever small thing they’re guarding that’s meant to be hers. “I have some water,” she adds, pulling her flask from her belt. “Would you like some, in thanks?”

That bit of desert courtesy is, apparently, universal; the woman’s eyes widen and she smiles wide. “You’re a sweet girl,” she says approvingly. “I have my own supply, but I thank you for the offer. You keep every drop for yourself. And take care you don’t step on anything likely to give way under your feet, now. We do our best to keep the Imperial scrap cleaned up but when the stones go they go in a hurry.”

“I’ll be careful,” Rey assures her, securing the flask again. “Thank you, and enjoy your dinner.”

She walks around the walls toward the north gate, keeping in the patch of shadow at the walls’ base. The sky is getting deeper blue, the day sliding toward evening. She needs to hurry or she’ll have to spend the night in the ruins of the Temple. BB-8 won’t like that at all.

There are a few people loitering around the gate, most who look like locals but one woman in a Mandalorian helmet. Rey keeps her eyes on where she’s going and doesn’t let her shoulders tense. She reaches into the Force and pulls the energy around herself, setting off a frequency that doesn’t exactly make her invisible but encourages the eyes to slide past her. It’s not as direct as clouding minds one-on-one, but it’s better for an open space like this. She’s simply not interesting enough to look at. Might as well look up at the sky, or go find somewhere to drink as the evening comes in. Might as well move on.

The rest of the walk is quiet, except for the gradual feeling of something stirring in the back of her mind. Ghosts waking up. 

“What exactly is it I’m looking for?” she asks softly as she approaches the ruins. “What did you send me here for?”

 _You’ll see_ , they say, pleased, ecstatic. God, they feel so much, freed from their fears of letting their emotions overwhelm their control of their bodies. It’s overwhelming.

She walks into the ruins themselves, stepping carefully, picking her way over rubble and slag. There are even bones scattered here and there, but no ghosts cling to them. There’s nothing to be done for the long-dead, except the ones who have taken up residence at the back of her mind.

She can’t call what she’s walking down a hallway; the sky is open overhead and the walls only exist as remains less than knee-high on either side. At the far end, shadows gather under a ragged overhang of rock and sand fused to glass by some blast of overwhelming heat.

“What happened here?” she asks, but there’s no answer this time. Her ghosts have fallen into a reverent silence, their presence in her mind alight with anticipation.

Two forms appear in the shadow under the glass. They don’t glow blue with the Force light Rey is familiar with, but instead a kind of rosy gold. Two men, one with close-cropped hair and one with long hair and a beard, holding their hands out to her in quiet welcome.

 _Child of the Force_ , the first one says. _We knew you would come in time._

“Are you Guardians?” she asks, taking a step toward them. “Or, were you? Before all this?”

 _We were_. He smiles and gestures for her to come closer. _Time doesn’t mean very much here. We’ve been waiting forever, and only a moment._

 _It’s been about one lifetime or so,_ the other one says, rolling his eyes. _Don’t listen to him. He’s dramatic._

Rey smiles; apparently ghosts other than Luke can hold on to their sense of humor. “Well, I won’t keep you too much longer, then. What am I supposed to find here?”

 _We can’t show you_ , the short-haired one says. _But we’ll guard you while you search._

Rey looks around at the ruins. “A search might take a while. Can you at least give me a hint?”

 _Come on, child._ The bearded one’s voice is a reproof. _Use your head. The wreckage of the Temple of the Kyber. What are you likely to be sent here to find?_

She flushes a bit and ducks her chin. Right. It’s more training, not a game. “Something… Force-related, I suppose.”

 _Very good._ Now he’s mocking her. _Take the next step._

 _Be kind_ , his partner chides him. _She’s very young, and this place is a dump._

The bearded one sighs, or the closest approximation of it a ghost can manage. _The Temple_ , he says again, with great emphasis this time, _of the Kyber_.

“Oh.” She breathes out slowly. “But there can’t be any crystals left. The Empire took them all, didn’t they?”

 _They took them on the grand scale_ , the first man says. _But when things are being looted, small pieces slip between the fingers._

They’re both staring at her meaningfully now, and she has a suspicion that if she pretends she still doesn’t get it, they might throw a rock at her head. Each.

“Right,” she says instead, shaking out her arms and closing her eyes. “Let me just…”

Reaching out through the Force to look for something that’s not alive is a bit trickier than looking for something that is. A Kyber crystal should resonate at a different frequency than the dirt and rubble, something she can feel. She hopes so, anyway, or this is going to be deeply embarrassing.

Sweeping her mind along the left side of the hall, then the right. The wall behind where the ghosts are patiently waiting. The ceiling. The floor. Nothing.

 _Open your mind_ , the bearded ghost murmurs. _Think in all dimensions._

More helpful teachers than Luke, in their own way. Or at least they use easier riddles. 

She looks beneath her feet, sinking down into the dirt, and then behind her, searching in a sphere with herself at the heart. And there—there. Behind her and to one side, midway up what’s left of a wall in what once was a room.

She makes her way there like she’s moving through a dream, digs at the remains of stone and mortar, claws at it like a frantic creature until she remembers herself. She rests her forehead on the wall and drags in a breath, then another, reaching through the tendrils of the Force that hold together the atoms of the molecules of the wall and what’s hidden within it. Reach, and grasp, and take, and draw it toward her…

The Kyber crystal comes free and nestles in her palm, feeling not like a stone but like something alive. It’s no bigger than the square sketched by her thumb folded at the knuckle. Dirty, rough-cut and rough-polished beneath the layer of grime. Golden as the sun on the desert sand.

“This is for me?” she asks, not looking up from it. She can see all the way to its heart, light filtering through the mineral planes. 

_That will be the heart of your lightsaber_ , the first man says, _which is a tool we do not approve of, but preserving your tradition preserves the kin of our own, so we’ll allow it._

Rey’s ghosts stir irritably at that, but don’t flare into speech or presence. She turns the crystal in her palm, marveling at it. 

“Thank you,” she says. “I’ll take good care of it. And I’ll search every library and database I can find for stories of your order, so you won’t be forgotten.”

 _You’re a sweet girl_ , the bearded man says, just like the woman at the edge of the city. _May the Force be with you._

 _It will be_ , the other ghost says, and he smiles as they begin to fade. _Always._

They’re gone, and the ghosts in Rey’s mind are silent. She’s alone in the ruins of the old temple, and the sky has gone dark overhead. Stuck for the night, just as she’d feared.

But not without something to do. She touches the toolkit in her belt, thinking. Overnight is just about time to finish cutting the gem, and make a plan for how to house it.

She’s holding the sunrise of the Jedi’s next day in her hand, and now she knows what she needs to do.

“You could have just told me,” she says aloud. As close as her mind and as far away as the Force reaches, she hears the Skywalkers laughing. The crystal in her hand picks up the last scraps of light, and dances for joy.


End file.
